I’m working on short story about the first fight I was in as a kid. This phone sketch shows some of the main characters including the girl Key Key who kicked my 5 year old ass lol. The fight will serve as a vehicle for telling the story of my life. I intend to do more stories about my fights, and weave a narrative together, but right now I really want to nail this one down so that I can print it as a mini comic in time for MICE.

I have been working tirelessly on my new book, specifically I have been trying to get better at line work, story telling, and spotting blacks. These are some unedited, un-colored and in progress pages from the upcoming Bessie Stringfield: Tales of The Talented Tenth vol. 2. These seem to work better. Ask me again tomorrow and I’ll probably say they need to be completely redrawn. So goes self doubt, lol.

I was talking to my daughter about history. My 16 year old started with Federalism and it merged into a discussion about race; more specifically slavery. There is a family legend that we are descended from five sisters who were stolen from Louisiana. I said to my daughter that they were probably Creole, and since her mother is white, and I am fairly light skinned that they probably looked a lot like she and I. She mused that it really wasn’t that long ago. I said “I know,” and that there are people alive today who witnessed a lynching, or protested integration. That got me thinking about how a history of violence is embedded in our cultural memory. It is as much a part of the U.S as the Liberty Bell, and amber waves of grain. Black people in America bare that violence on our skin. Are there are any carmel colored indigenous tribes in West Africa? Probably not. There are, however, countless accounts of the wholesale rape and torture of black women. That means for black people the very violence that is embedded in American history is also embedded in our blackness; our light skin, and soft features are from years of rape. It is rather depressing, but also empowering, because it means that in the history of my skin tone there was a woman who survived, and thrived in the place where unspeakable things happened to her. There are those who will say that will say I shouldn’t think like that, or that I should not be so focused on race. The problem is that if I never look in a mirror, or at a photo of myself, or I become truly blind to the color of my skin it will not matter to the world; because America will remind me. But, that reminder will also cause me to be aware of the fact that I am the product of perseverance in the face of tragedy.